By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) There is wonderful serendipity to the fact that Darkest Hour was released in the same year as Dunkirk, with both films focusing on the same specific events in World War II, albeit approaching them from different sides. Where Christopher Nolan’s film was an on the ground look at… Read More Review: Darkest Hour
By John Corrado Telling the story of Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez), a 12-year-old boy in Mexico who journeys to the Land of the Dead on Dia de Muertos to try and break his family’s generations old ban on music, Pixar’s Coco is a wonderful film that is both beautifully animated and extremely moving. This was one of my… Read More Blu-ray Review: Coco
By John Corrado I have always had a big soft spot for Lady and the Tramp, Disney’s 1955 tale of the romance that blossoms between the pampered pet dog Lady (Barbara Luddy) and the “footloose and collar free” street mutt Tramp (Larry Roberts). Now the film is being reissued as part of their Signature Collection. Having… Read More Blu-ray Review: Lady and the Tramp: The Signature Collection
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The term “Oscar bait” has become a common and arguably slightly overused pejorative to describe a certain type of adult drama. But Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which was rushed into production in March of last year with the full intention of releasing it in time for awards season in… Read More Review: The Post
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The second film directed by 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Never Let Me Go screenwriter Alex Garland, who made his directorial debut with the provocative and intellectually stimulating Ex Machina in 2015, Annihilation is another unique work of science fiction that challenges us with its heady themes and ever shifting… Read More Review: Annihilation
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Bea (Charlotte Salisbury) is a shy and awkward tween girl from Toronto who travels with her mother (Delphine Roussel) to a small town in Northern Ontario, where her father (Christopher Bolton) has inherited the local diner. While her parents struggle to patch up their fraying marriage, Bea strikes up… Read More Review: Porcupine Lake
By John Corrado I have already sung the praises of The Florida Project on multiple occasions, even declaring it my favourite movie of last year. So there isn’t much more I can say about the film at this point that I haven’t already said, other than the fact that it’s worth seeking out now that… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Florida Project
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Based on a true story, that in turn became a bestselling autobiographical book, Same Kind of Different As Me tells the story of art dealer Ron Hall (Greg Kinnear) and his wife Debbie (Renée Zellweger), who live in a big home with their two teenaged kids in Texas. When… Read More Blu-ray Review: Same Kind of Different As Me
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) I don’t think anybody was asking for a sequel to the 2015 holiday comedy Daddy’s Home, but it was mildly successful at the box office, so I guess a followup was inevitable. At the beginning of Daddy’s Home 2, step-dad Brad (Will Ferrell) and biological father Dusty (Mark… Read More Blu-ray Review: Daddy’s Home 2
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) At the start of Roman J. Isreal, Esq., the title character (Denzel Washington) is drafting a criminal case against himself that would have him disbarred from practising law, which he plans on defending and prosecuting himself. The film then jumps back in time to show us the series… Read More Blu-ray Review: Roman J. Israel, Esq.
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Taking place thirteen years before he would become the first African-American Supreme Court Justice in 1954, Marshall focuses on a court case from earlier on in the career of famed civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman). The year is 1940, and Marshall is working for the NAACP… Read More Blu-ray Review: Marshall
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Joseph Kosinski, Only the Brave is based on the true story of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots, a group of local firefighters in Prescott, Arizona led by team captain Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin). Tired of being outranked by the California Hot Shots, Marsh works closely with Fire… Read More Blu-ray Review: Only the Brave
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest claymation feature from Aardman, and the first directed by Nick Park since helming the animation studio’s Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005, Early Man is a delightful caveman comedy that boasts their trademark mix of clever visual humour and witty one-liners.… Read More Review: Early Man
Black Panther Review By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Picking up after the events of Captain America: Civil War, when Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) witnessed his father King T’Chaka (John Kani) get killed in an explosion in Vienna, forcing him to assume the role of Black Panther, Black Panther offers a standalone adventure for… Read More Three Views: Black Panther
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The title of Poop Talk provides the most apt description of what this documentary is about. Directed by Aaron N. Feldman, who closely collaborated with brothers Randy and Jason Sklar on the project, the film features a bunch of stand up comics talking about, you guessed it, poop.… Read More Review: Poop Talk
By John Corrado Directed by George Clooney, working from a decades old script by Joel and Ethan Coen, Suburbicon takes place in a seemingly idyllic 1950s community made up of white families and cookie cutter houses, that is rocked not only by a brutal invasion at the home of Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon), but also… Read More Blu-ray Review: Suburbicon
By John Corrado Titled after the nickname given to the area of 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, back when New York was still a grimy hotbed of sex and drugs before it got cleaned up in the 1980s, The Deuce is an HBO series that takes place in 1971 and focuses on the… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Deuce: The Complete First Season
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The first time we see August “Auggie” Pullman (Jacob Tremblay) in Wonder, he is jumping on the bed, with his head floating up and down in slow motion in front of the stars painted on his wall, and his face obscured by a plastic astronaut helmet. Auggie is… Read More Review: Wonder
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Rob Grant and Mike Kovac are a pair of friends and independent filmmakers from Vancouver, and at the beginning of their documentary project Fake Blood, Rob tells us in voiceover that they are no longer on speaking terms. The film then goes back to tell us what happened… Read More Review: Fake Blood
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Ben Layton (Thomas Middleditch) is in the throes of depression, finding himself unable to cope after his wife left him for another man. But he finds a new purpose in life when he finds out that his parents nearly adopted a baby girl, who they had to give… Read More Review: Entanglement
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